Chapter 20

They were driving on a road so narrow she didn't know what they'd do if they met a car coming the other way. There was a mountain rising steeply on one side, and a sheer drop on the other, so far down she couldn't make herself look.

After a while, the sheer drop was replaced by olive groves, in wide steps that looked as if they'd been cut into the slanting hillside. She felt more comfortable with the olive groves. You could fall down them in stages, one by one, all the way to the cool, blue Mediterranean.

"Forget what I said about people losing their inhibitions over here," he said. "That doesn't apply to you. And there's something you ought to know."

"You're married?"

"Divorced. Not that. The whole bedding down business. What I've come to believe about it. I'm pretty archaic about the whole scene, anyway. I don't believe there's such a thing as a man seducing a woman, or the other way around, in the classic sense, with the whole thing culminating in vintage wines and violins. When the girl is ready, she lets a guy know, is all. And the other way around, too. So let's drop the subject."

"You brought it up," she said. "I already dropped it, a long time ago."

He was quiet for a while, paying attention to his driving. On that road, right along that stretch, she was glad he was giving his driving all the attention he had.

After a while, the road flattened and straightened out, and he turned to grin at her.

"There's a little village near here," he said, "or rather a cluster of houses. There's no church and no gas station and no post office and no store. But what there is is a nice, dim, cool little bar. And that little bar makes up for all the other things the town doesn't have."

"Let's go," she said. "I'll plant a flag there, too."

He looked at her to see if she was needling him, but she wasn't. Right then, the bar sounded like a wonderful idea to Lynn. At ten-thirty in the morning. Goodbye, Vermont, she thought.

The bar was everything he'd said it was, dim and cool. And empty. The proprietor came through a curtained door on one side of the little room as they settled themselves on stools. He was smiling, but he didn't say anything, just stood behind the bar in front of them, waiting for their order.

"Ever try a Dutch beer called Amstel?" Curt asked her.

"No. But I'm willing to try it.'

"Two Amstels," Curt said.

The man, dug two bottles out of cracked ice, opened them, and set out tall glasses. As she sipped, Lynn was reminded of the morning in Malaga with Chris and Rita, and all at once she felt the level of lust rising in her, like the beer poured into her glass. And it wasn't an all-purpose, indiscriminate lust, like that morning with the Coombs. It was a very specialized, discriminating kind of lust.

She wanted Curt, wanted him badly, and to hell with everything else.

"After we finish this beer," she said, not looking at him, "I'd like to see the place where you're going to live."

"Sure," Curt said. "Wonderful idea, but I was afraid to bring it up' ,myself. It's only about a twenty-minute drive from here."

He finished his beer quickly, but no more quickly than Lynn did. She hadn't chug-a-lugged a beer since her freshman year at college. She wondered if Curt knew what she had in mind.

Not that it mattered. He'd find out soon enough.